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The H-1B visa was in many ways like the NCAA tournament. They had March Madness to Don Imus. We also worked like mad in March. My kids came home from college for March break, and I hardly got to see them. For the first time in my life I realized that the NCAA players give up their March break too, to play. And then we predicted, in April, which ones of our petitions will go through. We did the statistical probability calculations about the lottery. And then we waited and waited……. Is April going to be the cruelest month for the immigration professional?

Is immigration Law inherently Xenophobic? Xenophobia is defined by wikipedia as “a fear and contempt of foreigners.” Immigration laws are created to include or exclude “foreigners”. At its root then, immigration laws, no matter for which country it is, is necessitated by inherent xenophobia. The horrible discrimination and inequity of the history of US immigration laws clearly reveals this. A body of law that rises from prejudice and hatred towards fellow citizens of the world thus cannot ipso facto be fair.

The USCIS has received by some estimates 200,000 H-1B applications for roughly 65,000 spots. Clearly the Vermont and California Service Centers were not equipped to deal with this volume. While I sympathize with the staff, I am hearing about a lot of irregularities. Quite a few got receipt notices before the lottery, and some got approvals after the lottery. (I am talking about non US Master’s Degree holders). How can we be sure that a case was properly entered into the lottery system, with all possible cases, and given a fair chance at the lottery? Was there a higher power (besides God) who oversaw that lottery to see it was properly done? I need to see those documents along with each of my rejected cases.